An ERP Study of Semantic Processing in Kannada – English Typical Bilingual Individuals – A Pilot Study

Abstract

Considerable neurophysiological research has been conducted to explore the neural underpinning of semantic and syntactic processing in bilinguals by using various neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques. However, the debate of the cortical organization of the two languages in bilinguals is still going on. The present study was carried out with aim of investigating how multiple languages are processed in the human brain. Event related brain potentials, specifically, N1 and N400 potentials were recorded from right handed typical bilinguals during a task involving silent reading. The participants in the experiment were five Kannada – English bilinguals of Karnataka state in southern part of India. The bilinguals, highly proficient in both languages, had exposure in both languages since the age of 5 years. The stimuli were words that would correctly complete a short, meaningful, previously shown sentence, or else were semantically incorrect. The task consisted in deciding whether the sentences were well formed or not, giving the response by pressing a button. The participants read 100 Kannada (50 correct & 50 incorrect) and 100 English (50 correct & 50 incorrect) sentences to compare the processing of the two languages within the group. The findings revealed subtle differences in the latency and amplitude measures of various ERP components such as N1, and N400 potentials. The present paper highlights the several processes that are involved in the differences in processing of these two languages and their implications to the understanding of language processing in clinical populations such as in bilingual aphasia.